


From Dust

by Jen425



Category: Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider Decade, Kamen Rider Zi-O, Tokusatsu
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Decade vs Zi-O Spoilers, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29669808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: Tsukasa wakes up from a horrible dream.
Relationships: Hikari Natsumi/Kadoya Tsukasa/Kaitou Daiki/Onodera Yuusuke
Comments: 17
Kudos: 10





	From Dust

**Author's Note:**

> I found a way to work DvZ/ZvD into my Canon but. That is very complicated, and I know we’re all suffering. Some notes:
> 
> \- this was my original plan for Journey Through the Decade happy endings.  
> \- in my Canon, Yuusuke and Natsumi both temporarily died in 2012 and the ot4 did not reunite until right after the Decade finale  
> \- Natsumi is a goddess of Helheim now it is a Long story  
> \- Yuusuke revived in an awful way and is still dealing with… side effects
> 
> That said this is a oneshot and can be enjoyed as such. I hope you do so!

Tsukasa doesn’t jerk awake, he wakes up slowly, which is endlessly worse.

Nothingness had felt so good in those last moments. Nonexistence. Peace.

Finally, peace. An end to the suffering, losing them and hurting them whether together or apart. The death, all those deaths, even pulling in Invess. Monsters. So much death and he hadn’t caused it, not this time, but he’d happily taken advantage as much for revenge as to stop Sougo.

Didn’t matter, he’d die and the others would come back either way.

And then… then he could rest. Because he’d lost his tethers one too many times.

…But the more he wakes up, the more he realizes it was merely a vivid dream. He reaches out with his powers. He can feel the Worlds he’s touched. Ohma is, for now, contained. The Worlds aren’t in danger. Daiki’s off, somewhere. Natsumi and Yuusuke are on an unfamiliar World, but they’re _out there_ , within his reach.

He lets out a shuddering breath. Getting up and heading for the shower. He takes it from freezing cold to burning and takes in the feeling of being alive, but he can’t…

He can’t forget that desire for nothingness because he lost them again.

Maybe it was just a dream of his desires.

Maybe it was a vision.

The pain was too real, he thinks. It wasn’t a normal dream. If he touches his stomach he still feels the pain of the incorrectly healed stab wound where no scar remains.

But it doesn’t feel as though time has passed, so it wasn’t reality either.

He sighs, still letting the hot water beat at his back. Why had he gone? They were his… they were his _everything_ . They _are_ his everything.

But he hasn’t had someone to lean on for so long. He thinks he’s forgotten how. And when Natsumi had gone into his nightmare like that…

Both of them are still hurt but he couldn’t be strong. And this running is… worthless. It won’t last, or it may very well end like the nightmare. Him unable to recognize a fake Yuusuke from the real one. All of them dead.

He can’t lose them again. Running won’t save them if something happens, but he’s scared. Scared of his own confused reactions. Because he shouldn’t need them, he’s…

He’d finally moved on, and then they came back.

Maybe that’s what his dream means. It’s his fears, his worst ugly fears. Even Yuusuke evil, that would be…

Be…

He stays under the water thinking until it returns to ice cold temperatures and then he slowly gets out. Still thinking.

It would probably be better to just go home, but he’s still worried.

But they aren’t safe, either way.

  
  
  


“Tsukasa!” Yuusuke cries, almost knocking him down from the force of his hug. Tsukasa still catches him. “You’re back, we were so worried!”

“Why worry?” Tsukasa asks. “Very little could ever keep me down.”

_Losing all of you might,_ he thinks, trying not to remember that dream. And yet it’s why he’s here, on a world in springtime, early enough to still have that soft breeze but late enough to enjoy it. Yuusuke continues to smile.

“I’m still glad,” he says. “I was worried it was…”

The attacks. Right. Tsukasa shakes his head, meets Yuusuke’s worried gaze.

“I will blame no one for your pain except _what caused it_ , and never you,” he promises. “I left because…”

_Because I was scared_.

He doesn’t say it, but it’s enough. Yuusuke laughs, letting go of him.

“I’m glad,” he says. “I… really am.”

  
  
  


Natsumi looks like a goddess. No, literally. She pulls her blonde hair behind her ear, form rippling on the edges like a photograph’s ink as she steps out of the Veil before it all fades back to something human.

(Invess there, there were Invess there in his dream because Helheim had lost its guardian.)

“Tsukasa…” she says.

“Welcome home,” Tsukasa replies, with a smirk. She doesn’t run to hug him, she walks forwards slowly.

“That’s my line,” Natsumi replies. Tsukasa tilts his head.

“I know,” he says. Natsumi reaches him but doesn’t reach out, not yet.

“You promised,” she says. “You promised you’d tell us where you were going, and when, but you just… _left_.”

“I know,” Tsukasa says. “I’m back now.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“I’ll try.”

Even if he leaves, they can find him, though. And he can find them. And next time, he will keep his promise.

(He tries not to remember when they found him just in time to be destroyed, in events that never happened.)

Her pain isn’t loud, like Yuusuke’s. But she’s all but trembling when he finally holds her, and _oh_ , right.

He’d forgotten. She’d held out on seeing him so that she could protect him. 

He never should have left.

  
  
  


“Something happened,” Daiki says. Tsukasa rolls his eyes.

“I told you, nothing happened,” he says. “I’m fine, I’m home. Shouldn’t you be more embarrassed, what with that stunt you pulled with Zi-O’s friend?”

Daiki scowls but doesn’t respond.

“I’m home, too,” he says. “But you have that look, like you’re planning something, or maybe just recovering from one of them.”

Tsukasa glares. Daiki laughs.

“You’ll have to tell us eventually,” he says. “They’re far more stubborn about this than I could ever be.”

Tsukasa sighs.

“I don’t want to hurt them.”

“I find keeping secrets hurts more,” Daiki replies. For once, he’s pulling Tsukasa in. Tsukasa lets him, leaning into the unsteady but unwavering support as he closes his eyes. It was Daiki’s death that broke him, in that dream. Daiki had never died before, nor had he come back.

That and the feeling of fading…

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Daiki wipes the tear. It’s softer than they’ve ever been, in so long.

“It’s all over now,” Daiki says. “I guess we just have to move forwards.”

  
  
  


He tells them. Tells them it was more than a dream yet certainly not reality, shows them where the infected and incorrectly healed stab wound still hurts long past where it should, far beyond its nonexistence.

“Then I…” Yuusuke says, and Tsukasa grabs his hand.

“ _No_ ,” he says. “It wasn’t you. You were a hero to the… to the end. You helped people, I promise you. That fight… it kept him from escaping, and he was still weak, when Sougo killed him.”

“Tsukasa, you wouldn’t…”

Natsumi’s eyes are so worried. Tsukasa wishes he could promise her it was just a nightmare.

“I don’t know,” he says simply. “I don’t plan on finding out. Not for a long time, if ever.”

Life isn’t infinite, not for all of them. He’ll hold onto it for as long as it lasts. Daiki takes the hand not holding Yuusuke’s.

“I don’t plan on that, either,” he says. “I rather like have you around.”

Tsukasa smiles.

“The important part is it didn’t happen,” he says. “And it won’t.”

Because this, this right here… is the ending he deserves. And he’ll hold onto it tightly.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact about the title: rough draft was “but it was just a dream” and thus I had “Warriors” stuck in my head the entire time I wrote this!
> 
> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita or @dancingqueen-mai for just Toku edits


End file.
